On the opposite side stood the big boy braving the low-bred cur which barked and growled at him with its ugly head stretched out like a serpent's; while his owner, who was probably not so unkind as we thought him, stood enjoying the fun of it all.

Reckoning upon the big boy's assistance, I scrambled out of the water, and sped, like Achilles of the swift foot, for the boat.

I jumped in and seized the oars, intending to row across, and get the big boy to throw the clothes of the party into the boat.

But I had never handled an oar in my life, and in the middle passage--how it happened I cannot tell--I found myself floundering in the water.
Now, although you might expect that the water being dammed back just here, it would be shallow below the dam, it was just the opposite.

Had the bottom been hard, it would have been shallow; but as the bottom was soft and muddy, the rush of the water over the dam in the winter-floods had here made a great hollow.